


I'll Ask Her

by warriorpoet



Category: 30 Rock
Genre: 2008 United States Presidential Election, Crack, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-11
Updated: 2008-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1629113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warriorpoet/pseuds/warriorpoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a new woman comes in to his life, Jack begins to look at Liz differently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Ask Her

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Jade Okelani

 

 

Lemon is talking, but Jack isn't listening.

He thinks he hears something about standards and how can they have a problem with it when it's literally referring to drapery made out of cold-cuts? But, he's really not sure. 

Instead of listening, he's looking at her. Actually _looking_ at her. 

There's something about having a new woman, no, not a mere woman, a concentrated ray of all that is _right_ with the world, come into his life. It makes everything seem slightly less distasteful.

Including Liz Lemon.

There is a problem here. But now, Jack knows how to fix it.

He starts fixing her in his mind, mentally erasing and retouching. This is workable. He actually has something to work with here. Finally.

"Um... Jack? What are you doing?"

He listens when he hears his name and notices that he's somehow moved across the room to her. That, and he's now touching her. Her ears. Gently pinning them back with his thumbs while his fingers comb her hair up.

He lets go, hands to his sides. "Where are your glasses, Lemon?"

"Oh. They broke. 'Cause, get this, Frank said there was no way that I could balance a pencil on my nose, which I can totally do, so I had to take them off to do it and then Lutz sat on them. And they broke, and... and why are you looking at me like that?"

"Have you ever thought of maybe wearing your hair in a little up-sweep thing? Putting on a nice lady-suit?"

"What? C'mon Jack, this isn't more of your mentoring advice, is it?"

Those little black eyes of hers roll and the gesture is somehow more annoying when it isn't hidden behind corrective glass.

Jack sniffs indignantly. "There are people out there you could learn from, Lemon. People who have hauled themselves out of the squalor of humble origins to rise to the very edges of greatness."

"Inspiring."

"It is. And you need to take notice of it."

He sits behind his desk. The conversation is over.

"So... about 'Meat Curtains'?"

Jack blinks at her. So vulgar. "That is hardly an appropriate topic of conversation for a place of business."

"But --"

"Don't you have work to do?"

Her mouth is still moving, but the words appear mercifully trapped inside her tiny, tiny skull. She frowns.

She leaves.

Jack picks up the phone.

***

Liz stares at the little gold peacocks on the carpet, framed between her sneakers.

It's probably for the best that she doesn't try to work out exactly what the hell just happened.

So instead, she absently shuffles pages until the elevator pings and opens up at her floor and she's already talking when she walks into the writers' room.

"Okay, standards are not going to let us get away with 'Meat Curtains', so let's cut it and maybe do a rewrite of 'Congressional Roller Derby' to pad it out a little --"

When she glances up, she notices the whole table staring at her. Like Jack was, except less creepy, except there are more of them doing it, so maybe it's more creepy.

"What? Do I have bird poop in my hair again?"

"You see it, don't you?" Frank says.

"Totally." Josh is gaping in shock.

"You know, I'm not seeing it." Pete cocks his head and frowns at Liz.

This is getting annoying. Liz crosses her arms and tries her best to look vengeful. "Guys. What?"

Toofer digs under his legal pad for the newspaper, and he's paging through it and folding it as he gets up and walks over to Liz and holds it up beside her face.

"Ohhh. Wow. Yeah, now I see it." And now Pete's nodding and the rest of the table is joining in with a chorus of "Yeah, totally," and a lot more nodding.

Liz snatches the paper from Toofer and stares at the photograph.

Ugh. These guys are idiots.

"You guys are idiots."

"You don't see it?!" Frank cries.

"No. I don't."

But if Jack does, it might explain something.

***

Liz is hiding in her office.

The urge to hide first came when everyone started calling her "Guv". And then suddenly Josh was doing it in a really bad Cockney accent, which was completely irrelevant and about a thousand times more annoying. So of course that meant everyone else had to do really bad Cockney accents as well. And then came the inevitable monologues about chimney sweeping.

She's not sure if they even remember what the point of the joke was in the first place.

She doesn't care. She doesn't want to know. So, she's hiding in her office.

But that isn't good enough. She's staring at the photo in the paper that she swiped from Toofer and scowling and hoping that this crap doesn't keep going for the next three months (let alone four years, ugh) when Jonathan is opening her door with barely a real knock.

"Mr. Donaghy has made an appointment for you in wardrobe."

Liz tosses the paper across her desk. "An appointment for what?"

He doesn't answer, just gives her a stupid enigmatic 'it's the will of the great Jack Donaghy, how dare you question it?!' look and says, "Please come with me."

So Liz heaves the sigh of the greatly inconvenienced and follows him, thinking that hiding in her office had been a dumb idea. You shouldn't hide where people expect to find you.

She probably should've hidden in the NBC newsroom, where they'd have plenty of photographs handy that were just like the one in the paper. And footage on those big-ass wall monitors, where she could stand beside it and have people point and mock her some more.

Nope, nobody would've expected to find her there. But then she probably would've had to explain herself to Brian Williams, and --

This is a no win situation.

***

They've given her something like one of those Laura Bush suits, but worse. The jacket is red, the kind of red that'd make the folks at home want to adjust their sets if the saturation was up a little too high.

Liz isn't even going to start on what a joke that flag pin is.

She's already complained and squirmed and tried to escape once, but then Lee kind of slapped her. So now she's just scowling, and Jonathan is standing by the door and scowling back.

When she's pushed into the makeup chair and tries again to say, "No, this is stupid, I don't want to do this," because she can see what's happening and it's starting to get a little frightening, the makeup girls start begging her, saying that Mr. Donaghy said they'd get a week off if they did this and if not, they'd get transferred and have to spend the rest of their careers trying to hide that vein in Keith Olbermann's forehead that's always popping out.

Liz gets quiet. She figures she probably owes them.

She keeps her eyes closed because she doesn't want to see this happening. And when Jonathan taps her on her power-suited shoulder and hands her a pair of rimless glasses, she finally looks.

"Oh, my God."

She sees it now.

This is not good.

"Mr. Donaghy is waiting for you upstairs."

This is really not good.

***

Jack can't stop mooning over the photograph on his desk. 

He made some calls and pulled some strings to get it here this fast. It's an official portrait, nice, not something he cut out of the paper and framed like he was a damn schoolboy with a crush.

Just quietly, though? He would consider himself smitten. No, not smitten... enamored. That doesn't sound quite so common.

When Liz Lemon is shoved into his office, a shrill protesting mess, he's forced to look away from the picture. And up at a living, breathing doppelganger.

"Jack, I know what you're doing, and this is so creepy and wrong, and seriously? Threatening to transfer my staff to get them to --"

If only she'd stop talking.

" -- it's... it's... it's just _weird_ is what it is --"

"Stop talking."

She comes out of her little bubble of fury and takes him in, sees the new addition to his office decor.

"Is that her portrait?!"

His fingers close around the top of the frame, pushing it down, hiding the photograph against the desk. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Jack... look, I understand why you'd be attracted to her, you're in to her..." here she tries to suppress a shudder, "her _values_ , and I see it now, okay, I see that I kind of look like her. But... dressing me up like her? What, are you going to make me stand here so you can ogle me and make me whisper sweet limited government talking points in your ear?"

"Lemon. Stop. Talking."

Something about the way he says it and the way he's looking at her makes her stop. He hears her breath catch as he stands and moves toward her. She inhales shakily.

"Jack..."

"You're perfect."

He's entranced. He can't take his eyes off her. Of course, he has to squint a little to fuzz up the details, to gloss over those last few burning sparks of indignation in Lemon's little shark eyes.

Perfect.

"You are the future. Everything I never dared to believe actually existed."

She swallows. "Um... Jack?"

Jack quiets her with a hand on her shoulder. He briefly wonders if she's going to taste like moose meat and gunpowder before he leans in to kiss her. 

"Oh, Sarah."

His eyes drift close and he misses seeing the flash of panic that lights up hers.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Safe word! Safe word!" Liz backs away, her hands raised in protest. "Jack. This is me."

He steps back as well, rights himself, straightens his already straight shirt cuffs. He looks at her. Looks at the ground. Looks back at her. Clears his throat.

"Your safe word is 'safe word'?"

"I don't have a safe word."

"Obviously."

Liz tugs her hair out of its up-swept knot and pulls at it uncomfortably until it looks like a fine home for a family of parakeets. "So, um... we'll pretend this never happened and never mention it again, right?"

Jack reaches for her, and she flinches, but he just gently pulls the rimless glasses away and folds them up, placing them in her hand.

"Obviously."

 


End file.
